BlackBerry's Innovation: Square-Screened Smartphones 139
EthanV2 sends word that BlackBerry, having finally caught up to a world dominated by smartphones, is now trying to push the envelope by developing a smartphone with a square screen. The BlackBerry Passport has a 4.5-inch screen with a resolution of 1440x1440. The phone has a physical keyboard as well. In a blog post about the new phone, they show a picture with it side-by-side with an iPhone and a Galaxy S5 — the Passport is slightly taller than the iPhone, and significantly wider, as you'd expect.
The Passport is a play for BlackBerry's "traditional" work-oriented user base, where the earlier BlackBerry Z10 and Z30 were efforts to break into the post-iPhone consumer smartphone space. Though the Passport may well be preferable for spreadsheets and word processing, that square screen will be much less useful for widescreen movies, and its wide, blocky design will entirely prohibit one-handed use. The Passport is expected to appear later this year, and it will launch with BlackBerry 10.3 (at least, according to early hands-on previews).
It's like we've learned nothing in 5000 years (Score:5, Insightful)
1.25-1.5:1 How hard is that? We've got centuries of experience in making page sizes for reading and viewing, and most of them fall into that range. Unless you're Hasselblad, ditch the square. If you're not a television, please don't use 16:9.
#getoffmylawn
Que the outrage (Score:4, Insightful)
Complaints of "no one is innovating anymore" followed closely by "look at BB, stupids, phones HAVE to be one handed and pocketable! No innovation allowed!"
Me? I kind of like it. I use two hands anyway so why not make a true two handed device?
Re:Que the outrage (Score:0, Insightful)
They're actually behind the curve a bit on that. Some of us know better than to further wreck our vision watching movies on phones so we're not interested in 6" 2K HD displays. Yet we still want a fast CPUs with adequate storage, battery life, up-to-date radios and the latest OS software. Manufacturers have begun to respond; Xperia Z1 Compact, S4 mini and a few others have appeared. These are powerful phones that are "normal" sized circa 2010 before phones morphed into "phablets."
Sadly the next Nexus 6 grows huger with a 5.5" display..... women can barely operate these stupid things without both hands and a bench. WTF are they thinking?
Please stop buying this silly crap. What sort of homebody, office drone life must people lead such that these monster smartphones are acceptable? Go outside once a year. The instant you do you're going to discover that 18" sq. inches of costly electronics and 3000mah batteries are TOO DAMN MUCH to carry around.